Devil bulb flowers stand upright and may have pale pink markings. The stem is rounded.

Photo: Pam Peirce

Devil bulb flowers stand upright and may have pale pink markings....

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Photo for a story on trying to follow the Locavore challenge, of eating locally on a budget. Nicholas Petti and his wife, Jaimi Parsons, along with their 8 month-old son, Marlon, foraging for food. Nicholas is a chef and owner of a restaurant in Fort Bragg, CA called Mendo Bistro. Photo of Wild Onions.
Event on 4/5/07 in San Francisco.
photo by Craig Lee / The Chronicle
Ran on: 08-21-2011
The flowers of wild onion, originally from the Mediterranean region, dangle downward and are marked with green lines. The stem is triangular.
Ran on: 08-21-2011
The flowers of wild onion, originally from the Mediterranean region, dangle downward and are marked with green lines. The stem is triangular.

Q:I read your article on "devil bulbs" with amazement, astonished that this plant could have such a terrible reputation. This "wild onion," as I've always called it, is the harbinger of spring, sprouting up in February coastside, and finishing with its short cycle by mid-May.

The gentle and drowsy clusters of flowers add a sweet visual - and edible - element to my food stylings at the bed and breakfast where I work. The individual flowers are wonderful added to salads. If the plant is left alone, it doesn't spread like a disease; it just keeps its own little place in the corner by the kitchen steps. I'm looking forward to seeing it again next February.

A: The short answer to your dilemma is that we are not talking about the same plant at all! You're talking about a wild onion, originally from the Mediterranean region, Allium triquetrum. It does, indeed, sprout in winter and die back completely in May. Its onion scented/flavored flowers and leaves are delicious in salads or added at the end of cooking soups or stir-fries.

Devil bulbs (Nothoscordum gracile) does not smell like onion and probably isn't safe to eat. It has leaves all year, and flowers most heavily in the summer months. Its lack of onion scent is a clear difference, as is the fact that it blooms in summer, but a further list of differences offers good practice in looking at plants more closely.

People who look at plants quite a bit see differences that others may not notice. When you buy a plant, you usually don't need to look at it closely. You read the label. You buy the plant. You admire the flower. You don't worry too much about the way a botanist would distinguish it from another, similar plant.

However, when you are identifying wild plants or weeds, you need to be more careful. This is particularly true when you plan to eat a plant. Never eat a weed or other wild plant you haven't identified with certainty!

So how can you visually differentiate wild onion from devil bulbs? To identify a plant, differences in the appearance and arrangement of the flowers are usually most important. Flowers of these two plants are both mostly white with six petals. On both plants, several flowers originate from the top of a bare stem, an arrangement called an "umbel." However, flowers of wild onion dangle downward on their little green stems, and each petal is marked with a central green stripe. Flowers of devil bulbs point upward and, if they have markings, they will be pale pink.

Another clear difference is that the bright green strap-like leaves of wild onion have a sharp ridge, or keel along their undersides, making the leaves sort of triangular in cross section. The flower-bearing stems are also triangular in cross section, having three equal keels. The slightly gray-green leaves of devil bulbs are also strap-like, but the underside has no keel, and the flower stems are rounded.

Underground, the bulbs of wild onion are beige and ball shaped, up to about 3/4 inches in diameter. Even the small, newly formed ones are round. Some consider the plants to be terrible weeds, and it's true the bulbs will be spread when you dig the soil, but they are at least fairly near the soil surface and are easy to see and remove.

What is truly horrible about devil bulbs is that the bulblets are tiny, easy to miss and form deep in the soil. They are the size and shape of rice grains. A mature plant has many of these, so loosely attached to a parent bulb that they fall off readily. Bulblets are white when very young, but soon turn a dark brown that makes them hard to locate when they fall into the soil. They form up to 8 inches underground, making the plants difficult to dig. If someone accidentally misses them while digging, hundreds of plantlets will follow.

Both wild onion and devil bulb flowers also set seed, which is deposited on the soil when the flower stems fall over, letting the plants "walk" across the garden. When you eat wild onion flowers, you prevent seed drop, but I pick off any I don't plan to eat as well, to limit spread of the plants. I also pluck off the flowers of devil bulbs when I don't have time for the daunting task of digging out these aggressive spreaders.

Interestingly, you can find seed or bulbs of both of these invasive plants for sale. I would never, under any circumstances, plant Nothoscordum on purpose, and would only introduce Allium triquetrum in a contained situation with intention to harvest and tend it carefully.